Top Chef World All-Stars Power Index, Week 12: French Trickery!

This week's Top Chef saw the world's most Top Chef guest judge ever: a hipster jello expert.

Each week, I’m keeping a running tally of which contestants on ‘Top Chef World All-Stars’ are up, which are down, and who’s the odds-on favorite to win it all. This post is basically a recap, so obviously it will contain episode spoilers. I mean duh.

This week’s episode of Top Chef World All-Stars introduced us to the Final Boss of Top Chef Guest Judges: the hipster jello expert. It’s so perfect I could cry.

Much like younger millennials and Zoomers probably are with anchovies on pizza, I’m just barely old enough that I can sort of remember, at the very outer edges of my early consciousness, the idea of jello molds as a thing that people made fun of. Never as a thing I witnessed myself in real life. Which makes it, of course, the perfect fodder for some stylish urbanite to resurrect for hipster dinner parties.

That stylish urbanite turned out to be Sam Bompas, who, Padma explained, is actually half of the famous jelly team (?) Bompas and Parr. Basically, he looked like the corporate reboot of Richard Blais.

It’s like someone took a picture of Richard Blais and put it next to a picture of Graham Eliot and asked “What if we could combine both of these style choices in one man and make them work?”

The show also introduced him with this shot, which seems absurdly sexual:

He’s so hot for that tweaked jello nipple.

Anyway, Bompas explained that he starting getting really into “jellies” during the pandemic, and somehow turned that into a business. Thus began the apparently-known jelly collective Bompas & Parr, whose website is a masterpiece of text I can only decipher 30% of.

Sam Bompas and Harry Parr first came to prominence through their expertise in jelly-making, but the business rapidly grew into a fully fledged creative studio offering food and drink design, brand consultancy and immersive experiences across a diverse number of industries. […]

Hell yes, I love immersive experiences across a diverse number of industries! Can one of the industries be “timber?”

The multi-disciplinary studio now consists of a team of creatives, designers, cooks, specialised technicians, producers and film-makers and also contracts externally with structural engineers, scientists, artists and psychologists - in fact, any other discipline that facilitiates a particular response to a creative brief – to experiment, develop, produce, and install projects, artworks and exhibitions.

(*looks at creative brief*) Quick, get me a decorative titanium smelter!

Genre-defining projects include Alcoholic Architecture, an inhabitable cloud of gin and tonic; the world’s first Multi-Sensory Fireworks display for London New Year’s Eve 2013; and the Taste Experience for the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin.

And here all I wanted to do was ask them the difference between jam and jelly.

Anyway, we must give Bompas credit. He was there to introduce a jelly challenge, explaining how jellies should jiggle-jiggle, have a little quiver to them, shaking like Santa Claus’s belly and whatnot, and the whole time his high hair quaff was shaking and quavering like chihuahua in cold weather. Didn’t seem like an accident! this man has turned himself into a human jello mold!

But perhaps we’re getting ahead of ourselves. This week’s episode saw the return of the Last Chance Kitchen winner. Which is to say, the second and final chef from the consolation bracket, the first being Dale (Johnnycakes) back in episode 6 — and, with five chefs remaining, would decide which four would get to go on to the finale in Paris, France.

So after the Quickfire was over, it was time for Padma to reveal the deciding challenge. (*drum roll*) Which turned out to be… A TROMPE L’OEIL CHALLENGE!

As Padma explained it, Trompe L’Oeil ceramics were all the rage in 18th Century England, when aristocrats, fops, dandies, and various fancyboys would all have the time of their lives stacking their feast tables with the occasional pottery that looked like food. Basically, the origin story for Is It Cake.

Imagining a bunch of toffs sitting around a giant table and one of them cuts into a pie and some birds fly out and another one tries to eat some peas and ends up cracking his teeth on painted porcelain, it does sound like a pretty good time. Makes me want to paint giant moles on my face and wave a silk handkerchief with abandon.

As far the show goes, it was basically the classic “Doppelgangers” challenge by another name. I’m the food playin’ a food, disguised as another food!

Now, if you were thinking to yourself, “Hmm, a jello mold challenge followed by a food trickery challenge, that all sounds like it would heavily favor Buddha,” go to the head of the class. This episode might as well have been called the “Cook Like Buddha Challenge.”

The judge for the elimination challenge was Jeremy Chan, a soft-spoken chef with two Michelin stars and a stylishly shaved head, who if you close your eyes sounds exactly like Harry Styles in that press conference clip where he makes Chris Pine start disassociating:

RESULTS

Quickfire Top: Sara, Ali, Buddha*.
Quickfire Bottom: Gabri, Tom.

Elimination Top: Buddha*. Gabri.
Elimination Bottom: Sara, Ali, Tom**.

(*Winner. **Eliminated.)

RANKINGS (Change from Last Week)

5. (-1) Tom Goetter — Top Chef Germany Finalist, Season 1

AKA: Meekus. Sprockets. F-Boy Tom. Spotted Ox Hostel. Funnybot.

I was making an effort to just watch this week’s episode once through without writing anything down, like a normal viewer would, instead of stopping every ten seconds to take notes, like I usually do, but then Tom revealed that growing up, “pranks were my superpower” and “I actually went to clown school.”

My “watch like a normie” experiment instantly went up in smoke and I almost broke a chair scrambling for my notes app. All this time I thought that in caricaturing Tom as this cackling, nipple-tweaking imp, I was just trading in semi-offensive German stereotypes. It turns out no, this man actually went to clown school! Huge moment for me.

I also love the idea of F-Boy Tom showing up to clown school, thinking he was about to learn about all the most wicked and diabolical pranks and then it turns out no, it’s mostly unicycle riding and learning to juggle. It turns out nein, chefs are za real tricksters, ha ha ha!

In other callbacks to previous columns, F-Boy Tom further revealed that this extremely deep V, which I had previously joked looked like a woman’s shirt Tom had put on in haste after his latest conquest, was actually made for him by his mom:

I hereby apologize to Tom and his sweet mother, it is a very nice shirt.

Anyway, inasmuch as this week’s challenges seemed tailor made for Buddha, they also seemed tailor made for Tom (much like his shirt). This guy loves a thickening agent! Incredibly, after a season of unnecessary agar-agar use, poor Tom still came up short in a gelatin-specific challenge. Which is sort of like John Daly getting beaten by another golfer in a beer chugging contest (golf analogies? God I’m washed).

The elimination challenge wasn’t specifically gel or jelly-related, but Tom still found a use for his thickeners, his glorious thickeners, turning seaweed and fish stock into caviar:

Reviews: “It's the most technical one, but I find the texture kind of gummy.” “I think a better trick would be to make caviar that doesn't taste anything like the ocean.”

Padma rightly made the point that caviar that didn’t taste like the sea, rather than fake caviar that looked and tasted like actual caviar, as Tom made, would’ve been a better “Trompe L’Oeil.”

Fair point though it may be, I still think Tom got kind of a raw deal on this one. He made a successful trick of the eye, it was just a little conceptually lacking. Whereas Ali’s trick of the eye wasn’t really successful at all. Seemed to me like Ali should’ve gone home, but maybe the judges just had some misgivings about letting a German march through Paris (as an American, it took an incredible amount of restraint to limit myself to just one corny WWII joke).

4. (-2) Ali Ghzawi - Top Chef Middle East And North Africa (MENA) Winner, Season Three

AKA: RRR. Maui Wowie. The Strain. The Ghizza. Muhammara Ali.

This week Ali made a rhyme joke about wanting the judges to “send Ali to the finale,” yet another instance of it feeling like the chefs have been reading this column even though the show was filmed months ago and I know that’s temporally impossible. I’ve been making Ali Ghzawi rhyme jokes all season! Get outta my head!

Anyway, this week yet again opened with some gratuitous Shirtless Ali footage, which I can’t begrudge the producers for. I met Ali in person the other night and he is indeed very handsome. That has to be an awkward conversation though, doesn’t it? “Hi, we were just wondering… would it be possible to film you changing? Please, sweetie, just a feet pic.”

Whereas Tom was a prankster aspiring to clownhood in his human interest package, Ali revealed an entrepreneurial spirit, describing how, back in school, people liked his sandwiches so much that he ended up selling them, to students and faculty alike. At one point, Ali says, he was making 150 sandwiches every day. That story reminded me a little of the Fyre Festival guy’s crayon business story from kindergarten. Ali certainly isn’t that level of bullshitter, but I do wonder about the logistics of it. Did the bread truck have to stop by the house every morning? Where did you store the meats? Who was your lettuce purveyor?

All that time making sandwiches may have caused Ali to miss a few key science classes, because his big plan this week was to serve the judges food meant to look like a garden, with turtle-shaped falafels as the centerpiece. I’ve never had turtles in my garden, but I did like Ali saying that if he makes it to the finale, “I’m gonna buy a big turtle and name it Amar.”

We’re gonna have to hold him to that.

Reviews: “I find it a bit drying.” “It's a very authentic dish.” “It gave me the feeling of eating a very well done falafel.” “There's trick of the eye and there's inspired by a garden, this is inspired by a garden.”

That last one (which was the quiet guy) nailed it. I thought it’d be enough to send Ali home, but I guess maybe it just tasted that much better than Tom’s collection of spherical stabilizers? I suppose that isn’t hard to imagine.

Time to buy that turtle, bro. I know a guy.

3. (even) Gabri Rodriguez - Top Chef Mexico Winner, Season 2

AKA: The Black Pearl. The Mongoose. Wile Y. Coyote. El Mangosto.

Gabri is quickly becoming one of the best “dark horse” contestants this show has ever seen. He’s been on the bottom at least five times, but he wins every now and then and mostly he just keeps hanging around. This week was classic Gabri: blow the quickfire with a mold the doesn’t set, and then come in a close second in the elimination challenge with an inspired Trompe L’Oeil.

Gabri also seemed like he learned from last week. Remember Amar and Sara’s undercooked lamb wellington? Something I thought I wrote but apparently forgot to: if they would’ve just called it a lamb tartare wellington they would’ve been fine.

So what did Gabri make this week? Lamb tartare surround by brioche bread. Practically a damned raw lamb wellington, only on purpose this time. Smart! And he also made it look like a sponge as an homage to his beginnings as a dishwasher.

Reviews: “I think his idea was very tongue in cheek, very sweet.” “It needed to be in a mold where it went all the way to the edge.” “It's classic cooking.”

In an especially inspired moment for Gabri, his hot cheese foam squirted all over his nice plate, and, instead of trying to fix it, he realized that a messy plate actually fit the concept and just rode with it. As a humanities major, I can’t resist anyone who justifies an ability gap through creative bullshitting.

2. (+4) Sara Bradley - Top Chef Season 16 Finalist

AKA: Party Mom. Reebok. Sassparilla.

As referenced above, I got to attend a Top Chef event this week, and my experience there makes me not at all surprised to see Sara return to the competition. It was a press event where the winning team from this year’s Restaurant Wars (United Kitchen) recreated their menu from that event.

Sara, if you’ll remember, made a play on “Cullen Skink,” a type of fish stew, with cod wrapped in seafood mousse, mussels, smoky broth, potatoes, and tiny bacon bits. Basically a deconstructed seafood chowder. Here’s my picture of it:

I’m here to tell you: not only was it arguably the standout dish of the evening (Buddha’s deconstructed English breakfast was also very good), I watched Tom Colicchio, who was sitting next to me at the dinner, mow down that entire plate in about 15 seconds flat. He was done before Sara had even introduced it. Dude was literally licking sauce off his finger.

Anyway, I was worried for Sara this week. Trying to make food disguised as other food isn’t really her bag (she admitted as much) and probably shouldn’t have to be. I was worried that she was going to cook herself back into the competition after one unfair elimination, and then get eliminated on some bullshit challenge that seems more suited to finding Marie Antoinette’s court chef than a modern restaurant chef.

Sara played it right though, focusing more on making an undeniably delicious dish than a true Trompe L’Oeil and hoping someone else would screw up.

Reviews: “I can smell what it’s going to be, but I'm not sure what it’s supposed to be now.” “Maybe sushi? I don't know.” “Why is the broth so acidic.” “I liked the dumpling and the chicken inside.” “I loved all the textures, the vegetables in it.”

Sara knew full well that her carrot and onion jellies shaped like carrots and onions were kind of bullshit and that her masa tube wasn’t really fooling anyone, but also: who is going to kick you out for duck fat matzo ball soup with bone marrow? That sounds amazing.

Sara feels like Buddha’s closest competition right now, though I realize that doesn’t feel like it’s saying much right now.

1. (even) Buddha Lo - Top Chef Season 19 Winner

AKA: Moneyball. Double Down. Big Data. Buddha.

I’m not going to look back at all my power rankings posts this season to see how many times I had Buddha number one, but I’m pretty sure it was either all but one or all but two. With two more victories this week (four in a row total, going wire to wire in two consecutive episodes), it doesn’t take a genius to put Buddha in the top spot.

Buddha is clearly one of the smartest competitors ever to compete on this show (Joey Devine compared him to one of those Jeopardy winners who know how to game the system), but if I have one criticism, it’s that this episode had two challenges that could not possibly have been more tailored to Buddha’s skill set. The guy who brought 57 molds in his backpack and works making edible sculptures at a caviar tasting room gets a jello mold contest and a doppelganger challenge as his last challenges before the finale? When does Sara get an Appalachian-takes-on-Jewish-classics challenge?

Buddha’s achilles heel, if he has one, is rustic comfort food that’s not supposed to look like anything (basically any “bowls of stuff” food — curry, chili, goulash, mole). I don’t really see that coming, especially in a finale set in France, which makes Buddha basically the 2007 Patriots this season (this episode was his Tuck Rule).

Can anyone step up and become his Eli Manning-to-David-Tyree in the finale? What is the food equivalent of the helmet catch? Should I cut it out with all the sports metaphors?

Reviews: “Impressive.” “Yeah I've eaten all mine.” “It was like a still life.” “The broth I think is the thing that we've had today with the most flavor.” “Beefy.”

I probably only noticed this because Buddha’s “Tomato Tea” was fresh in my mind, but I wonder if he’s gone to the “savory broth served in a wine glass” well one too many times. On that note, the Tomato Tea was probably my biggest question coming out of Restaurant Wars, so I was probably more curious to taste that than anything else on the menu. My verdict? The judges were right. It was so perfect, and so much tastier than it had any right to be. It was hot and pungent and flavorful, so redolent of tomatoes in way that was strangely satisfying.

The whole table was raving about it, and Tom said something like “tomato water has been a thing for like 15 years, and all he really did was heat it up, which was a really good idea.”

Basically the platonic ideal of a Tom Colicchio backhanded compliment, just glorious.